1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video recorder, such as an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) recorder, a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) recorder or a digital VCR (Video Cassette Recorder), which is to be connected to a DV (Digital Video) camcorder via an IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers) 1394 serial bus, and which is capable of recording stream data sent from the DV camcorder.
2. Description of the Related Art
A dubbing method called program dubbing is known to dub (record) stream data reproduced from a DV tape of a DV camcorder onto a recording medium of a video recorder, such as an HDD recorder, which is connected to the DV camcorder via an IEEE 1394 serial bus. According to the program dubbing, a user first commands the DV camcorder from the video recorder to perform normal reproduction or fast-forward reproduction, and searches contents in the stream data in the DV tape. When the user commands a dubbing start position and a dubbing end position in the DV tape while searching the contents in the stream data, a microprocessor of the video recorder stores time codes in the data, which respectively correspond to the commanded dubbing start position and the commanded dubbing end position, as program data in a memory in the video recorder (such time codes being hereafter referred to as “start time code” and “end time code”, respectively). Based on the program data, the microprocessor controls the DV camcorder so as to automatically dub, onto the recording medium of the video recorder, the stream data recorded on the DV tape in a data area from a position corresponding to the dubbing start position to a position corresponding to the dubbing end position.
However, a conventional video recorder having a program dubbing capability simply compares time codes contained in the stream data sent from a DV camcorder with the start time code and the end time code contained in the program data, so as to determine the dubbing start position and the dubbing end position in the DV tape. This simple comparison of time codes causes a problem in the following cases where the recording mode is changed, for example, from SP (Standard Play) mode to LP (Long Play) mode when the DV camcorder is recording (photographing) on one DV tape, where the DV camcorder is subjected to image fade-in/fade-out process when the DV camcorder is recording on one DV tape, and where the DV tape is once taken out of the DV camcorder.
In these cases, the time code in the DV tape is automatically reset to “0:00” (0 or zero reset). This causes multiple stream data containing the same time code to be recorded on the DV tape. Thus, the simple comparison of time codes to simply compare the time codes contained in the stream data sent from a DV camcorder with the start time code and the end time code contained in the program data may make it impossible to accurately determine the dubbing start position and the dubbing end position in the DV tape. This will be described more specifically below with reference to FIG. 13, which is a chart showing an exemplary combination of the commanded dubbing start position, 0 reset position and commanded dubbing end position in the DV tape set in the DV camcorder according to the prior art.
For example, assuming that the commanded dubbing start position and the commanded dubbing end position, as commanded by a user, are those positions as schematically shown in FIG. 13, the microprocessor of the video recorder attempts to rewind the DV tape from the commanded dubbing end position to the commanded dubbing start position. However, the DV tape schematically shown in FIG. 13 is once reset to 0 (zero), so that in addition to the data corresponding to the commanded dubbing start position, the DV tape has separate data (data corresponding to the position P104 in FIG. 13) containing the same time code (0:05) as the time code (0:05) contained in the data corresponding to the commanded dubbing start position.
Accordingly, the microprocessor of the video recorder may mis-identify the position P104 as the commanded dubbing start position and may rewind the DV tape only up to the position P104. Thus, even though the user has wished for the video recorder to record the data in areas A and B in the DV tape, the video recorder may record the data in area D in the DV tape (area from the position P104 to the commanded dubbing end position). Furthermore, if the user attempts to set the commanded dubbing end position to the position P104 (the second position of time code 0:05) while maintaining the commanded dubbing start position at the same position as above (the first position of time code 0:05) in the DV tape shown in FIG. 13, the time code corresponding to the commanded dubbing start position becomes the same time code (0:05) as that corresponding to the commanded dubbing end position. Accordingly, the microprocessor of the video recorder may often reject such input.